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Army Advanced Development Programme AADP

Whitespace and EY Appointed to Support the Army Advanced Development Programme (AADP)

The British Army has appointed EY and Whitespace on an initial three‑year term, with options to extend, to support the delivery of the Army Advanced Development Programme AADP.
 |  Ai Defence Intelligence  |  Breaking

AADP is the Armyʼs flagship initiative to develop future business leaders and establish a sustainable internal consultancy capability to drive strategic change across Army HQ.

Created in 2016 by the Chief of the General Staff, AADP blends Executive MBA study,  leadership development and intensive business and consultancy skills training. Each year, up to 20 high‑potential participants - primarily Lieutenant Colonels and Senior Executive Officers, with cohorts typically 85% military and 15% civil servants join the programme.

The Whitespace team is partnering with EY to deliver the AADP with our CollectiveOS platform - a secure, enterprise‑grade conversational AI and research tool.

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CollectiveOS will give students and the Programme Management Office fast, cited insights and decision support, accelerating problem diagnosis and solution design through referenced research and multimodal analysis of policy, process and operational material. Delivery is standardised with reusable templates, role‑based sharing and auditable knowledge transfer across sprints and cohorts. All activity meets MOD security requirements, with cleared personnel, role‑based access and robust data protection.

EY will lead the business and consulting skills programme delivery from the foundation training and continuous up-skilling to coaching, governance and alumni support. CollectiveOS is embedded throughout, accelerating research and analysis in the classroom, within sprints and across PMO workflows, and ensuring consistent, cited outputs with auditable decisions. Together, we underpin training, coaching and governance with secure, transparent AI‑generated evidence.

“Weʼre excited to be working with our Partner EY and the British Army customer in bringing GenAI tooling to AADP and support cohorts to deliver faster insights, stronger options and consistent, evidence‑driven outcomes.ˮ - Andrew Webber, Chief Partnership Officer at Whitespace.

The AADP Cohort 9 programme officially launches on September 30th.